Friday, May 19, 2017

Get Off My Phone!

Holy shit! Tonight was a rough night at work.

Most of you know what I do to keep rent paid and no, it doesn't involve me shoving things up my arse. But sometimes it might as well.

It's call center work. The wonderful world of answering phone calls from people who think they know what they're doing but really don't. People who are cowards and bullies and have nothing better to do in their lives but shit on somebody who can't fight back.

Working at a call center is like being tied to a tree with tissue paper while somebody's shithead 10 year-old runs around you after a kool-aid sugar buzz, around and around, laughing and saying stupid shit to you. He's breathing through his mouth because of all the snot running down his nose and you just want to rip him apart.

I've worked a number of campaigns. Cable, satellite, newspapers, satellite radio, mortgages. I've done a lot over the years. I can tell you that each campaign has a series of categories everybody falls into.

Right now, I'm taking calls for a sporting goods company, and keying orders for hunting and shooting supplies. What I can tell you about that is this--I'm selling guns and ammunition to people who shouldn't even be allowed to use the phone unsupervised.

I sold a handgun to a blind man.

I sold about $1500 in ammunition to somebody so messed up he could barely speak, never uttered a complete sentence during the entire call, and had extreme difficulty giving me his full name and address. Yet somehow, his credit card worked, and he was able to buy 2000 rounds of 9mm hollow points, and I forget how many rounds of 5.56.

It's insane how ignorant some people sound on the phone. I always get a mental picture of what they look like or who they are based on how they sound. I've had shitheads call in to buy machetes I swear they'll use in a massacre of children later on. I've had fucktards buy air rifles and you just know they'll shoot their eye out.

People aren't nearly as diverse as we like to assume. We all fall into some category or another. We're not snowflakes. So when some shithead finds his or her way on to my phone, I know right away they'll fall into some category or another.

You people aren't nearly as unique as you think you are.

The spoiled mama's boy who always gets his way or he'll huff and puff and throw a tantrum. What? I don't get free shipping? But I always get free shipping!

I talk to a lot of loners. Men who aren't married and probably never were or will be. Or men who were left by their wives because it's clear they had the class of a junkyard dog. Men who sit in the dark, watching old westerns, and just want to go hunting.

There are men in this country who have their wives call in because they're so incompetent the simple act of having a phone in their hands while talking is just too much. Half of those idiots tell their wives what to do the whole time, so you hear the shithead in the background while their wives struggle to just get this simple order placed.

I despise people who do that. Nothing pisses me off quite like trying to talk to somebody while I hear a shithead in the background saying shit to me. It's rude. Shut the fuck up while somebody else is talking. If you have something to say, pick up the goddamned phone, speak into the phone like an adult, be a man about it.

And it's always men who do that. In all of my years of call center work, I can only think of once or twice a woman behaved like that. But then again, women have their own quirks.

I have to tell you a story. Years ago, I was selling cable, and it was an in-bound campaign. People would call a number on a flier that was mailed out and we'd try to get them to leave Verizon or AT&T for Comcast. Most of it was New Jersey and Maryland.

So one day, this guy from New Jersey called in. He had Verizon. I went through the process and about halfway through, his wife started chiming in from the background. At first, she was okay with everything, but not really interested. As the call progressed, we figured out that I could save these people about $180 a month on their cable, internet, and telephone bills. But the guy's wife had gotten more and more bitchy.

By the end of the call, she was full-on screaming her head off. She was cussing and raving. He even offered to hand her the phone so she could talk to me but she refused. Instead, she just got angrier and angrier, frothing at the mouth, screaming nonsense and gibberish. I wish I had that call recorded just so I could play it for you.

At the end, the guy couldn't even talk to me, because she was screaming so much. And so he apologized, which made her even more furious, and she screamed at him to just hang up the phone.

I want you to hear that call. I want her name boldly plastered on this blog so her behavior could be made public. I think everybody who behaves like that should be publically shamed and humiliated.

Today, a man called me. I asked him a simple question: Are you placing your order from the catalog or the website. It's simple and kinda something we need to know because it makes a difference in pricing and makes the ordering process faster.

His response?

"I just hung up on somebody for harassing me like that and I guess you're just gonna harass me, too. I hope this call is recorded." And then he hung up.

He then called back in, got another agent, and about three minutes later, called me back and demanded to be transferred to customer service.

I want to have a recording of that call and I want to make his name public. He was obviously a goofy fucker with some kind of mental problem. Most likely, inbreeding was an issue in his family, and that's why he acted like he needed a beating with a baseball bat. But laws being what they are, I'm not allowed to do that. My employer would never agree to something like that and smuggling those calls would most likely get me sued.

This is the problem with customer service these days--there's really no way to get back at bad people. If there was, though; if there was a way to get even with shitty customers who act like fucking morons, the game would change and people would act differently. They would behave better and no longer behave like mentally deficient inbreed fucktards.

One time, I had a guy call in and get really personal with me. He wanted to know about options in changing his account. There weren't many and it would only save him a dollar or two. He got personal with me. Very personal, in fact, telling me I was having an off-day and a few other things. Then, he hung up.

I Googled him after the call only to find he was a Baptist preacher in Oregon. The piece of shit was supposedly a man of God and yet he was one of the most insulting people to ever call me. That guy needs to be publically shamed. He needs his face and name plastered all over, along with a recording of the call, so everybody could hear just what kind of piece of shit he was, and how he treats people.

He was as much of a Christian as I am a bird.

But the laws don't allow it. Those calls belong to the employer and it would be illegal for me to post them. I'm certain that if a few of us started posting calls, though, more would gain the courage to do so as well, and we could start a trend. The grim reality of how pathetic some people are would be plastered all over the interwebs for all to hear.

Two months ago, I took a call from a guy who acted like every single syllable I said pissed him off. Just the act of asking him his name irritated him beyond measure. He was an asshole the whole way through. He deserves to be famous.

Call center work develops a healthy hatred of humanity because we're not allowed to say what we really think to people who do desperately deserve it.

Like the woman in St. Louis, who called me, and demanded to speak to somebody in India because when she needed help, she spoke to an Indian who couldn't speak English but when Charter Cable wanted to sell her something, she always spoke to an American. She was a real cunt about it, too.

I wrote her name and address down. I want to get even. It's been nine years and I still want to get even.

Or the asshole cop who called me, bitching about how Charter was maniacally robo-calling people several times a day, seven days a week. I had no control over that. None of us did. Charter is a shitty company with shitty leadership so does shitty things to people. If you have a problem with that, cancel their fucking services. Or better yet, file a lawsuit. Why in the fuck would you call a sales hotline and bitch to them about it? And the piece of shit kept telling me how he was a cop and blah blah blah. I fucking hate cops anyways, so why would I care? And then he played the shitty Guilt Card by telling me he was recently at a funeral for an officer who died in the line of duty and got a call during the procession from Charter.

I could go on and on. The insanity of a it all, the crazy people who call in, the rude pieces of shit who think they can say what they want just because you aren't allowed to be rude, it all just adds up to a portrait of how this world is a giant manure pit. Humanity is garbage and many of us deserve to be beaten severely or shot in the dick with bean bags.

There has to be some kind of payback we can do. There has to be some kind of way to get even with these people.

I'm going to keep working on it. And when I do, everybody on my shitlist will get their just rewards.